On 20 November 2008, Google introduced SearchWiki, allowing users to customize their search results by re-ranking, deleting, adding and commenting on them. I’m not going to cover how SearchWiki works, nor am I going to examine whether the impact of SearchWiki is positive or negative.

I was going to moan about how SearchWiki broke the Numbered Google Results script for Greasemonkey. Instead, I just worked out how to fix it. Here’s a simple hack to the Numbered Google Results script which allows it to work with SearchWiki.

SearchWiki Breaks The Numbered Google Results

The Numbered Google Results Greasemonkey script basically does what it’s title says: it numbers the results presented in Google’s Search Results. This allows you to instantly identify where a website is ranked. This is very useful for SEOs who are monitoring the progress of their websites in the SERPs.

You can see it in action in the following screenshot – note the numbers before each entry.

With the introduction of SearchWiki, the numbered results broke. Certain results, such as News results from Google, still show a number, but normal search results don’t. You can clearly see this in the following screenshot.

Note: If you’re not logged into Google, you won’t have this problem. This is because SearchWiki is only active (and therefore interferes with the script) when you’re logged in.

Solution – Hacking The Numbered Google Results Script

Thankfully, this problem can be easily solved by making a very simple hack to the script. Here are the steps (assuming you have installed the script):

Right-Click on the Greasemonkey icon in Firefox

Click Manage User Scripts and a dialog box will open

Select Number Google Results from the list

Click the Edit button (at the bottom of the dialog box)

If asked for the location of a text editor, find one on your hard drive (if you use Notepad, start by looking for C:\Windows\Notepad.exe)

Make the change shown below, then Save, Close and click Okay

Refresh (F5) Google to make sure the changes are loaded

Here’s the change. Find the following line (at around line 54):

if (tp.className == 'g') {

and change it to:

if (tp.className == 'g' || tp.className == 'g w0') {

I told you it was simple! You should now get numbered results whether you are logged into Google or not. SearchWiki won’t break it.

I’m just hoping that you could explain if SearchWiki does some good or bad effect on the real, non-login results. Google did not confirm anything about it but I have a hunch that there’s a possibility that results will be affected by this.

Congratulations Stephens for writing such a good post. I must say that you have chosen an important topic. I also believe that searchwiki has created an exceessive online clutter, which doesn’t worth appreciation.

For numbered search results I have been using SEO for Firefox with many other benefits and features. Although I am not quite familiar with searchwiki but I was planning to use it and to customize it. I think I’ll have to read a lot of stuff first of first.

This is really a good one and advisable to all..As the numbering shows the count of the sites occurred we can easily have a count on it..So that we can try to improve the count instead of checking one by one..

That’s broken quite a few things, including numbered search results. I’ve been getting these URLs from Google on and off for the last few months (I’m in Australia).

That doesn’t help you, I know. I guess the original author will update the script at some point, or perhaps I will if I get the time. In the meantime, the workaround is to use Advanced Search which uses the old style URL and allows the numbering to work..